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Notes -
https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-to-show-new-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-11411971
Ice shooting round 2 has kicked off. Numerous rumors already flying around but will be a bit before we have facts I imagine.
EDIT: I've been asked to add some relevant points, I'll say: this comment has links to various angles: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405295?context=8#context This comment mentions the "Sig misfire" angle that I've seen a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405451?context=8#context
Walz has activatedthe national guard: https://x.com/MnDPS_DPS/status/2012614253090619619 The NBA postponed the Minnesota/Golden State game tonight.
This is all coming down to a simple question: does the state have a legitimate right to a monopoly on violence?
It seems as though a very small contingent of revolutionary communists believe that the answer to this question is no. This is where the idea of disrupting police, "de arresting" people, rioting, etc. comes from. They don't agree that the state should have the ultimate power to enforce laws that they don't agree with. In this case they seem to disagree with immigration laws, and because of this disagreement they don't believe that ICE/DHS has a right to enforce these laws.
This is a big problem. An actual threat to democracy. Half the country voted in an almost single issue fashion to have our immigration laws enforced. A small (but growing) contingent of the left does not believe that that is legitimate, and therefore believe that they have the right to use force to oppose this.
The real question is: how do you de-escalate from here? These people (some of them) have convinced themselves that they are living through the rise of an authoritarian/fascist dictatorship and have precipitated some things that do pattern match to that. Aside from some sort of science fiction style deprogramming effort: how do you bring them back to reality?
This is a question that genuinely troubles me.
Setting aside the object level question of the incident here, the state having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force does not mean that all use of force by the state is legitimate.
Part of what legitimizes the state monopoly on violence is the assurance that if agents of the state step out of line, they will theoretically be punished. For example, police enforcing drug laws is a legitimate use of the state monopoly on violence, regardless of how any given individual feels about drug laws. But police planting drugs on someone to justify an arrest, is not a legitimate use of the state monopoly on violence, and should be punished by a state that is interested in maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.
Also, from a realpolitik perspective, you can't easily enforce a law the people (or some concentrated geographic subset of people) legitimately won't tolerate. Until we have a literally omnipotent government with infinite state capacity, the vast majority of a law's power comes from voluntary compliance. People see that the posted speed limit is 50, use some heuristics to see how likely enforcement is, and compromise by driving 55 miles an hour. Speed cameras and automated enforcement could change things, but there is some level of enforcement short of the most severe draconian enforcement that gets the most voluntary and happily willing compliance from the vast majority of the population.
Tell it to George Wallace. With modern state capacity you can enforce anything, if you have the will. For whatever reason only the left has the will.
I believe it would be more accurate to say that democrats have convinced themselves that only the left has the will and that's what makes these incidents are so shocking to them.
Recall that one of the first unguarded reactions captured from one of the protestors present at the Renee Good shooting was "WTF! Why would you have real bullets?" These people are so coddled that it never occurred to them that force might be met with force.
Renee Good and the other people at the sharp end are patsies. The people doing the organizing want them to be harmed and/or killed by ICE in order to shock the conscience of those who would otherwise support the ICE side in this. And I expect it to work.
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